Probably, they really do want to protect us from terrorists. But this is too much. I have nothing to hide. If they want to take a look at my computer, I'll gladly cooperate. All they have to do is show up at my door and with a warrant that they will show me, and I'll gladly let them look at whatever they want. But until they get that warrant, I'll do everything I can to keep my stuff private. I'd been putting off using encryption, simply because too few of my friends know how to use it. But I'll be starting now.
Wouldn't a Blackhole eventually consume all the matter in its galaxy?
Nope. A black hole doesn't have any more mass than the star it originally came from (plus whatever matter has been sucked in).
Now, since stars are roughly spherical in shape, the center of mass is the center of the star, which is where the black hole is now. So once you get as far away from the black hole as the surface of the star was from its center, a black hole's gravitational pull is no stronger than that of the star itself. It's only when you get inside that radius that trouble begins.
Naturally the radius grows as more matter gets sucked into the black hole, but nothing short of an entire planet (and even then we're talking a planet the size of Saturn) is going to change the radius by any significant amount.
I honestly think these idiots mean well. I do. And I think there might be a kind of link between media violence and real-life violence. But this is not the way to fix it.
Look back to the 50's and 60's. Many of the TV shows were westerns. In most of those, at least one person was shot and killed in every episode; that is violence on a scale if not a level of realism that you rarely see in today's television; it was certainly far more common then. Yet somehow, you didn't have all of these shootings and such. Yes, there were one or two isolated incidents, but it was never like it is now.
What's the difference, then? TV has, more or less, become less violent, yet violence is on the rise. In fact, take a look at the numbers; some of the least violent communities are out in the midwest, communities where kids have access to guns pretty easily and many hunt as a hobby (geez, how much more violent of a hobby can you get?) But even though they hunt, they don't lose control in schools. Hell, for a more extreme example, there's a high school in Montana I know of where kids used to bring pocketknives to school every day and were encouraged to bring chainsaws to the football games (their mascot is a logger).
Why? I think it's because of something which used to be taught in schools and homes which by and large isn't anymore. No, it's not religion. No, it's not morals.
It's respect.
Simply put, kids aren't taught to respect people very much anymore. That's why we now see ultra-exclusive cliques as far back as middle and in some cases even elementary school. It's why the teasing of geeks has gone from the relatively good-natured horsing around of the past (which really wasn't for the most part any different from what people did to their own friends; it was simply taken a different way) to the vicious, sometimes even violent, ostracism of today. And in most cosmopolitan environments, the idea of respect is gone. There's a pervasive "everyone for himself" attitude, which is causing the previous generation's title of "the 'Me' generation" to start to transfer out to ours.
Why is it still present in rural areas? I don't know. It's certainly no thanks to the religious right, the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever seen. Perhaps religion has a bit to do with it, but the idea of respecting all people doesn't contradict with any religion I know of, and I've studied many. Teaching respect doesn't conflict with religious freedom, and it needs to go back nto the schools. And not as the pretentious crap of uniforms or posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms (though if you cut out the four religion-specific ones then posting the remaining six wouldn't be that bad of an idea) or holding huge assemblies about it. It's something whic has to start in kindergarten or even preschool, and constantly applied until each and every child has a heartfelt belief that one should respect all people, if only for no other reason than that it is the right thing to do. Because if a child believes in respecting people, no amount of violence the kid sees is going to change that belief (unless there are other underlying psychological problems which will make themselves evident to anyone who looks long before the kid gets violent).
Still, I admit I wouldn't mind seeing Teletubbies or Barney banned. Perhaps we should also ban Microsoft software while we're at it (unreliability leads to frustration which leads to violent behavior)?
I honestly think these idiots mean well. I do. And I think there might be a linki between media violence and real-life violence. But this is not the way to fix it.
Look back to the 50's and 60's. Many of the TV shows were westerns. In most of those, at least one person was shot and killed in every episode; that is violence on a scale if not a level of realism) that you rarely see in today's television; it was certainly far more commmon then. Yet somehow, you didn't have all of these shootings and such. Yes, there were one or two isolated incidents, but it was never like it is now.
What's the difference, then? TV has, more or less, become less violent, yet violence is on the rise. In fact, take a look at the numbers; some of the least violent communities are out in the midwest, communities where kids have access to guns pretty easily and many hunt as a hobby (geez, how much more violent of a hobby can you get?) But even though they hunt, they don't lose control in schools. Hell, for a more extreme example, there's a high school in Montana I know of where kids used to bring pocketknives to school every day and were encouraged to bring chainsaws to the football games (their mascot is a logger).
Why? I think it's because of something which used to be taught in schools and homes which by and large isn't anymore. No, it's not religion. No, it's not morals.
It's respect.
Simply put, kids aren't taught to respect people very much anymore. That's why we now see ultra-exclusive cliques as far back as middle and in some cases even elementary school. It's why the teasing of geeks has gone from the relatively good-natured horsing around of the past (which really wasn't for the most part any different from what people did to their own friends; it was simply taken a different way) to the vicious, sometimes even violent, ostracism of today. And in most cosmopolitan environments, the idea of respect is gone. There's a pervasive "everyone for himself" attitude, which is causing the previous generation's title of "the 'Me' generation" to start to transfer out to ours.
Why is it still present in rural areas? I don't know. It's certainly no thanks to the religious right, the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever seen. Perhaps religion has a bit to do with it, but the idea of respecting all people doesn't contradict with any religion I know of, and I've studied many. Teaching respect doesn't conflict with religious freedom, and it needs to go back nto the schools. And not as the pretentious crap of uniforms or posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms (though if you cut out the four religion-specific ones then posting the remaining six wouldn't be that bad of an idea) or holding huge assemblies about it. It's something whic has to start in kindergarten or even preschool, and constantly applied until each and every child has a heartfelt belief that one should respect all people, if only for no other reason than that it is the right thing to do.
Still, I admit I wouldn't mind seeing Teletubbies or Barney banned. Perhaps we should also ban Microsoft software while we're at it (unreliability leads to frustration which leads to violent behavior)?
One word: bravo! If this one ever comes up, I'll gladly put away RC5 and SETI@Home to work on this. It's important that the Net be a secure place, and we need some kind of thing to ensure that holes are found and stamped out. While IDDN wasn't quite what I had in mind, it's definitely a winner.
Of course, law enforcement will hate IDDN; after all if there are no more security vulnerabilities how are they going to snoop on us^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprotect us from evil terrorists?
If they're going to dumb down a keyboard, they should do it somewhat like the iMac's.
No, I don't mean in terms of layout or size. I'm stuck on Grandma's iMac at the moment and I hate the keyboard. But consider: 12 function keys, the standard character set, the standard modifiers, Caps, Tab, the arrows, a standard numpad, Help, Home, Page Up, and Page Down. What else do you need, except perhaps a couple more function keys if you're an F-key freak?
Scroll Lock, SysRq, PrintScreen (unless you're on a Windoze box where the key supposedly takes a screenshot but doesn't even save the picture on the disk), and others like that have served their purpose. They were designed for ancient terminals, so few of which are in use today (with the ones that are in use being phased out, and no new ones being sold) that you certainly don't have to make new keyboards for them (especially since simply being able to use one renders a user non-clueless by definition, so you're not dumbing the keyboard down by removing them).
I'm for getting rid of superfluous keys that even the average Linux user has probably never used. Just don't cut out too many keys.
1) Although I can understand the sentimental value the founders place on their name, I do not think a "virtual nation" should be based on any physical one, not even in name.
2) If we're going to do the "virtual nation" bit, it should be limited to one, namely a governing body which concerns the entire Internet, independent of any nation.
3) No bill of rights. Then again, this wouldn't be practical unless a virtual nation concerning the whole Net was founded. This one's particularly important, because there needs to be a free speech amendment (FUN FACT: For all the dumb laws the US has, it's also the only nation with a free speech amendment). Come to think of it, what other amendments could one put into the constitution of a virtual nation; very few apply. I suppose protection against illegal search and seizure would be good (since it implies the right to use strong encryption). Anyone else got any others?
Those are the three main problems I see with this one. Then again, it wouldn't be particularly easy to create a single governing body for the Net, considering that physical governments would likely brand us as separatists and/or terrorists and have us all killed.
X's greatest strength is far andx away its configurability. Pair it with enlightenment, and you can almost literally draw an interface out on paper and have X look and feel that way.
If it's possible to have too much of a good thing, though, this is it. X is great for configurability, but it goes too far. Without any sort of "standard" toolkit, window manager, or any such thing, there's no standard sort of interface on which a user can rely. This isn't saying that configurability isn't bad, it's saying that if you're going to make something configurable, you need to set defaults too. X doesn't do that. Consider the multitude of GUI toolkits, three or four drag-and-drop protocols (all of which are incompatible), four desktop environments which don't even share common API's on most things (meaning that support has to be written into an app four times if the author wants to support everyone), and so forth.
X's major weakness, though, is its age. Now, old software isn't necessarily bad. It all depends on how far ahead the developers think. X's original developers thought ahead several years. Problem is, those years ended quite some time ago. Things like drag-and-drop, inter-application messaging, text antialiasing, support for TrueType fonts, and such never made it into X. They've come in since as bolt-on solutions, but these things are so vital to a modern GUI that they really ought to be rolled in (which you can't really do without shelling out obscene amounts of money).
I don't know. XFree 4.0 appears to address some of these concerns. I'll still be giving Berlin a spin when it's usable, though, if only to see if it's a better system.
"Man of the Century" is not necessarily an award, and in some cases it's not even an honor.
Here's the thing: the title goes to the person who has had some sort of great historical impact over the specified time period (the last century, in this case). Yes, Hitler was a madman, an utter freak, but you've got to admit that he did have one hell of a lot of historical impact.
Personally, I'd have the three go this way:
Man of the Year: Linus Torvalds (inventor/maintainer of Linux, an OS which came out of literally nowhere to challenge the Microsoft hegemony and is putting up one hell of a fight)
Man (Woman would be more appropriate in this case) of the Century: either Admiral Grace Hopper (inventor of FORTRAN, the first non-assembly programming language, which is a big part of why computers are so pervasive) or whoever at Intel is credited with the introduction of the microprocessor (just as important in the pervasity of computers today)
Man of the Millennium: Johannes Guterberg (inventor of the first practical printing press, the single biggest catalyst the the spread of knowledge there has ever been, even greater than the computer
Look. On most points, I tend to agree with you. Most people don't get AIDS by any other means than doing one of several very stupid things. Quite literally they bring it upon themselves. I know it sounds like a heartless way of saying it, and I'm not saying they don't deserve help, but that's more or less the way it is in most cases. In most.
There are others, however, who don't exactly have a choice in the matter. I could point to the classical example of the baby born with it, but that's too saccharine. I'll point to the ones who get it by, say, a bad blood transfusion which by some freak accident slipped through the screening process. Or worse, the ones who were deliberately infected by others who use their disease as a weapon (yep, such people do exist; there was a dentist in Florida several years back who infected nearly 20 people in this manner. They claim it's a move born of desperation, to force scientists to find a cure, but I don't think that makes the crime any less horrid).
Oh, and the other reason to invest in AIDS research: there are scientists who predict that by about 2010, AIDS will mutate and evolve into an airborne form, as contagious as the common cold. The other half insist that this is a ludicrous idea, that viruses take longer than that to evolve, and I tend to agree with that, but still, let's consider the 11-year one the worst-case scenario. Suddenly, it's not a "sinners' disease" anymore, is it? It's a plague which could well wipe humanity off the face of the planet. That's the thing: we need to find a cure, or at least a vaccine, fast.
I still don't like Bill Gates. And his donating $100G to AIDS research still doesn't put him in the same league as other "philantropic" billionares, who give far larger portions of their wealth away (take Ted Turner; he only donated $1G to his cause, but that was fully half of his wealth; I consider that to be the more generous contribution). But much as I hate to admit it, I've got to say Billy's actually done something good for a change.
By the way, as for the "sinners" bit; I suggest you get off of your holier-than-thou kick. You're certainly no better than anyone else; you can't even obey the simple rule of respecting all people (phrased in most translations as "love thy neighbor as thyself" but meaning exactly the same thing).
If the even numbers are stable, and the odds are devel, what happened to 1.4.x?
Linus decided there had been enough changes to warrant a jump all the way to 2.0
Maybe 2.3. will be 3.0.x
Perhaps, but I doubt it. Linux said he wanted to experiment with faster iterations. In other words, he wants fewer new features going into each release, which will allow more time to stabilize the code while it's still in development. He's also been good about not making huge version number jumps too quickly, and when he makes them it's for a damn good reason (wasn't 2.0 the first stable kernel to use ELF binaries?)
A nation can tax transactions which occur inside itself.
The problem is that the Net is not physical. It does not exist in any nation. Not even the US, even if the US created it.
If the Net were to create its own governing body (yeah right, like that's going to happen, though it might just have its uses) then it would have the right to tax transactions within itself (of course, it would need a form of currency first). But for a nation to tax transactions within something which isn't even within its borders, but in a sense isn't even on its plane of existence? Absolutely preposterous. I hope it doesn't pass, even though I know it probably will (that's the government for you; it used to be that it'd tax the hell out of you and still spend more, now it doesn't even spend all the money it gets yet it taxes even more).
You know, I've been considering the platforms for various parties, and there really isn't one that could be considered "moderate." All of them are too extreme in some manner or another. On one end, of course, there's the Green party, Libertarians, and anarchists. On the other you have Communists, totalitarians, reactionaries, and the religious right.
Even Democrats and Republicans are extreme, though not as extreme as most of the others. And that "reform party" is just as bad.
Even in other nations, the parties are the same general way. Sure, they go by different names, but no political party has its head screwed on quite right. It's just a matter os differences in where the extremities occur.
What we need is a "Common-Sense Party," for lack of a better term. Or perhaps a better name would be "Technologist Party." Something which places strong values on personal freedom and works to ensure it while striking a real balance between personal freedom and governmental authority (in other words, a balance which is even between the two, rather than tipped too far towards either end, which all the political parties I've seen are). I think it's a possibility.
Major issues include:
1) The free (as in unimpeded, not as in gratis) flow of information is crucial to today's society in a world where knowledge is rapidly becoming more valuable than gold. This has implications for encryption, education, and the media (particularly censorship). Free-speech issues are also included here. 2) Personal privacy is a vital aspect of personal freedom. This one also has implications for encryption. 3) Free will is the vehicle which drives humanity forward and keeps us together even through the toughest times. Note, however, that the right to free will does not include the right to infringe upon the free will or other rights of anyone else. This has implications on censorship as well as other issues. Note that, of course, free will includes free speech.
Anyone else care to expand on this? Comments? Anything?
The ban on encryption software could well be unconstitutional.
Forget free speech for a moment; this is another set of grounds. Consider that another amendment forbids illegal search and seizure. Encryption's whole purpose is to guard against such things. Therefore, it could be said that banning encryption is an infringement on Constitutional protection from illegal search and seizure. In fact, since Echelon has been proven to exist, that's exactly what the encryption ban is.
The primary purpose of law enforcement is to punish those who break the law (be it by removing them from society or imposing fines or other punishments), and it always has been. "Prevention" is only a secondary purpose, an one which has always been carried out only indirectly. Perhaps Janet Reno has forgotten this. I very much doubt that she intends to be the totalitarian dictator she seems to want to become. Then again, I also doubt that she's ever read Milton.
At least this isn't law yet. Individual states still have to pass it, and M$ can't bribe THAT many legislatures (hmmm... well, theoretically Billy could divide up a half-billion among each state legislature, but that'd be too obvious).
Hell, even if it can, the software companies (most of which are already ethically questionable when it comes to licensing; M$ isn't the only one) will create such outrageous licenses that Open-Source will simply look even better. The divide between OSS and proprietary is growing wider, and it looks as though it could be in out favor.
And, of course, the Supreme Court can still overturn it as unconstitutional (that bit about disabling software remotely could be construed as illegal search and seizure).
The movie ratings were a Good Thing. Operative word, were. When they bgan, they were a tool for parents, just like anything else. The idea was that a parent would have to decide if their child was mature enough to see an R-rated movie, with that decision being evidenced by the parent paying for the ticket. The scheme would have worked great, but it failed for several reasons, two of which are the most prominent:
1) Parents got lazy and wouldn't do any research on the movies their kids wanted to see. They took the ratings as gospel, offloading their responsibility onto a ratings board. 2) Movie theaters wouldn't enforce the ratings, by and large (and why would they; it meant lost ticket revenue and no one was forcing them to enforce the ratings anyway). This rendered it ineffective, which parents saw. If people don't think it's effective, it's not effective.
I see two things as needing to be done with the system. First of all, it needs to move to something more content-based, like the TV ratings systems of today. Some would say that this encourages lazy parenting even more. But the fact is that parents should at least know something about the movies their kids are seeing, and if this is the only way to get even semi-meaningful information into the parents' heads then so be it. Second, the ratings system needs to be enforced by movie theaters again. I know, I'm going to get flamed for this (which wasn't the intent). But I'd also be willing to bet that less than one percent of Slashdot readers, if even that, are over the age of 13 and that the vast majority of those have forgotten what it was like to be a kid. We weren't always mature adults; hell, some of us still aren't (as evidenced by all the FIRST POST-ers). There are some things which most kids simply haven't developed the maturity to handle seeing yet. Those who have can still see the movies, even by this system. It simply takes the consent of the people who one would hope would be mature enough to judge maturity and know the child well enough to do so accurately: the parents.
And think honestly; doubtless we all would have liked to be able to see any movie we wanted as a kid, but when you were eight or even thirteen years old would you have been able to handle Eyes Wide Shut or South Park or even American Pie? Or even if you could, would you have been able to really appreciate any of these? Perhaps a geek audience isn't the best to ask, since I'd imagine most of us were much brighter and more mature than average as kids, but you get the idea...
I'll grant, Linux is a Good Thing. I'll grant, it's gaining in popularity. But there is simply no way this is possible, not yet at any rate.
Consider, first of all, that not counting upgrades TurboLinux, Win98, and MacOS don't even take up 50% of the market in Japan by TurboLinux's own admission. This said, therefore, what are the other OS'es people are buying in Japan, considering that there must be at least six more for it to be mathematically possible for the numbers they gave to be correct (that is, with TurboLinux at the top, Win98 second, and MacOS third with the given numbers)?
Look, I'm rooting for Linux as much as the next guy. But someone at TurboLinux needs to check their numbers, because something isn't adding up
But still, I'd love to see the look on Billy's face when he reads that press release...
The most major problem is that no mater what biometric you choose, there are people who lack that biometric (handprint scans are useless to someone missing that hand, for example). To reduce the number of people who can't theoretically use a biometric system, you have to use multiple biometrics, any one of which grants access. This, however, increases the possibility for error. Furthermore, there is only one biometric which everyone is guaranteed to have, namely DNA, however this one has two severe problems: privacy concerns and the fact that identical twins (and clones) have the same DNA, so the biometric is not totally unique.
The other problem comes with theft. Nowadays, people will shoulder-surf or guess your password, or steal your token; eiother way you're rarely hurt. But I don't want to think of what they'd do to get my handprint or retinas.
This time I'm afraid I have to side with them (don't get me wrong, they're still an Evil Empire, but this is simply too much). First, because standards are a good thing. Second, because AOL's modification of their own protocol for no other reason than breaking Microsoft's clients is no different from what Microsoft did with Windows to break DR-DOS (granted, AOL still allows connections from other clients, but for how long?) To bash Microsoft when it purposely breaks a competitor's program is one thing. But to not bash another company that also does it, even if the broken product is from Microsoft (which is by definition broken anyway), is hypocrisy.
Granted, Microsoft's motives in releasing this client are doubtless sinister. They want to control this market too, and will somehow manage to Embrace and Extend this protocol to do it (don't ask me how they'll do it without being obvious). But they're right to blow the whistle on AOL for this action.
Here's the thing. In theory, resurrecting an extinct species is a Good Thing. Because of this, the idea of cloning an extinct species seems to be the ideal solution. In reality, however, this is hardly the case.
First, you see, you need to find intact DNA of the birds. Considering how long it has been, finding intact DNA of a Huia bird is going to be exceedingly difficult, particularly since you need to find the DNA of more than one (at the absolute least you need one male and one female).
One male and one female, however, is hardly enough. You need to find hundreds. Why? Well, consider this: if you clone two birds and mate them, the offspring will all be siblings by definition. Who, now, do you mate these with? Your only choice is to mate them with each other. This leads to an entire species of inbred birds, which (because the birds would inherit every single recessive gene which the parents posessed) would be devastating to the gene pool (even more so than unrestricted hunting, which is why cloning animals of an endangered species also would not work).
Our technology isn't at the point where engineering the necessary differences into hundreds of clones is a feasible thing. We haven't even mapped out the Huia bird genome yet; that alone will take years (if it's even possible, given that the species is extinct so the effects of the various genes cannot be observed).
That's the thing. This would be a great idea, if it could be done. But with our current technology, it can't. We're simply not at that point yet. It's a good dream to have, but for now that's all it will remain: a dream. Any attempts to do this now will result in nothing but millions of wasted dollars, money better spent developing the technology that will make this dream actually work.
Actually, it is open to competition. Look at UPS, FedxEx, Airborne, DHL, and dozens of other courier services. And while the competitors offer better services in some areas, their costs are orders of magnitude higher and they still don't offer some services which you get with the mail (most notably free daily pick-up and drop-off).
USPS will continue for a very long time, I think. It's still the cheapest way to send packages in the US unless you count throwing them really far (and I might add that it's one of the cheapest postal services in the world; consider the UK's Royal Mail for example).
The main problem with the service is that it is technologically backward, compared to the competing courier services. In particular its computer system is abysmal, though there is an intranet project in the works (last I heard they were even going with WebObjects as the base); this will allow for package tracking and such.
Yes, other courier services are faster. But given the choice, I think most of us would still prefer to use the USPS in most cases for sending non-urgent packages. It's sort of the low end of courier services; popular, cheap, and perhaps not as fast as the higher-end stuff but it still gets the job done.
Ah, yes, the ancient techie myth that simplicity and power are mutually exclusive. A myth perpetuated by lazy programmers who don't want to do it right the first time, corrupt MIS people who know that if everyone can use the machine they're out of a job, and pepole who want to feel "special" because they've spent years of training which shouldn't have been necessary learning how to operate a machine.
The fact is, given the proper software there isn't anything I can't do in Linux that I couldn't also do on a Mac. The reverse is also true. As a matter of fact, it's true btween any two operating systems, even Windows (though I hate to admit that one).
As for being able to change anything about the hardware, your point is moot because that can be done on a Mac as well (and it's still easier than doing it on Windows or especially Linux, even after the advances these OS'es have made).
In short, not only is it not "extremely necessary" to have a switch to make the OS complex, it's quite unnecessary. 99% of the population neither uses nor wants that, and the other 1% can still do everything they want. Yeah, you don't get to go power-tripping while doing it, but you can get it done.
Closed software? Yeah, to some degree. However, take a look at the direction they're headed in. THey've already Open-Sourced Darwin and QuickTime Server; my guess is that thty're testing the waters. If we don't give them a reason to regret this decision, it's likely they'll Open-Source more.
(Then again, there are so many anti-Apple zealots in the OSS community that my guess is that we'll be giving Apple plenty of reason to regret it, jugding from all the Apple-bashing I hear here).
Closed hardware: Again, to some degree. But again, look at the direction they're moving in. They went from NuBus to PCI, a more open standard. ADB to USB. SCSI to FireWire (well, there's a step back, but consider the steps forward). a proprietary ROM to OpenFirmware and no ROM (they're still cleaning out the last vestiges of the ROM, but it should be noted that the versions on the Blue G3's, iBooks, and the latest iMacs contain no OS-level code at all.) Couple this with an Open-Source operating sytstem made by Apple which lets you get the system specs easily.
Over-priced? You're one of those "something for nothing" freaks, I guess; you want a machine which beats the pants off of any comparably-priced PC for the same price as a PC. You're dreaming. It's better, and it deserves a higher price (notice also that the prices have come down; can you imagine what an iBook would have cost three years ago, switching its current specs for equivalent ones of the time?)
And unreliable: compared to Linux, yes. But it's by no means the worst on the market. A properly-maintained Mac will outdo NT in terms of stability and performance (then again, I suppose that isn't saying much).
And you know what, I'd say the emperor really isn't wearing any clothes, Your Imperial Majesty.
However, considering that the kernel now supports the iMac and the Blue G3's, I'd imagine iBook support won't be terribly difficult to do (remember that Apple's working on unifying the architecture so that all the models will eventually share one motherboard). My guess is that it'll support the iBook in a few weeks.
The biggest problem will be adding PPC AGP support to the kernel (needed for the video); that's never been done before. Existing x86 AGP code will help, but there are issues to overcome...
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Probably, they really do want to protect us from terrorists. But this is too much. I have nothing to hide. If they want to take a look at my computer, I'll gladly cooperate. All they have to do is show up at my door and with a warrant that they will show me, and I'll gladly let them look at whatever they want. But until they get that warrant, I'll do everything I can to keep my stuff private. I'd been putting off using encryption, simply because too few of my friends know how to use it. But I'll be starting now.
Wouldn't a Blackhole eventually consume all the matter in its galaxy?
Nope. A black hole doesn't have any more mass than the star it originally came from (plus whatever matter has been sucked in).
Now, since stars are roughly spherical in shape, the center of mass is the center of the star, which is where the black hole is now. So once you get as far away from the black hole as the surface of the star was from its center, a black hole's gravitational pull is no stronger than that of the star itself. It's only when you get inside that radius that trouble begins.
Naturally the radius grows as more matter gets sucked into the black hole, but nothing short of an entire planet (and even then we're talking a planet the size of Saturn) is going to change the radius by any significant amount.
No, I'm not a physicist, by the way.
I honestly think these idiots mean well. I do. And I think there might be a kind of link between media violence and real-life violence. But this is not the way to fix it.
Look back to the 50's and 60's. Many of the TV shows were westerns. In most of those, at least one person was shot and killed in every episode; that is violence on a scale if not a level of realism that you rarely see in today's television; it was certainly far more common then. Yet somehow, you didn't have all of these shootings and such. Yes, there were one or two isolated incidents, but it was never like it is now.
What's the difference, then? TV has, more or less, become less violent, yet violence is on the rise. In fact, take a look at the numbers; some of the least violent communities are out in the midwest, communities where kids have access to guns pretty easily and many hunt as a hobby (geez, how much more violent of a hobby can you get?) But even though they hunt, they don't lose control in schools. Hell, for a more extreme example, there's a high school in Montana I know of where kids used to bring pocketknives to school every day and were encouraged to bring chainsaws to the football games (their mascot is a logger).
Why? I think it's because of something which used to be taught in schools and homes which by and large isn't anymore. No, it's not religion. No, it's not morals.
It's respect.
Simply put, kids aren't taught to respect people very much anymore. That's why we now see ultra-exclusive cliques as far back as middle and in some cases even elementary school. It's why the teasing of geeks has gone from the relatively good-natured horsing around of the past (which really wasn't for the most part any different from what people did to their own friends; it was simply taken a different way) to the vicious, sometimes even violent, ostracism of today. And in most cosmopolitan environments, the idea of respect is gone. There's a pervasive "everyone for himself" attitude, which is causing the previous generation's title of "the 'Me' generation" to start to transfer out to ours.
Why is it still present in rural areas? I don't know. It's certainly no thanks to the religious right, the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever seen. Perhaps religion has a bit to do with it, but the idea of respecting all people doesn't contradict with any religion I know of, and I've studied many. Teaching respect doesn't conflict with religious freedom, and it needs to go back nto the schools. And not as the pretentious crap of uniforms or posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms (though if you cut out the four religion-specific ones then posting the remaining six wouldn't be that bad of an idea) or holding huge assemblies about it. It's something whic has to start in kindergarten or even preschool, and constantly applied until each and every child has a heartfelt belief that one should respect all people, if only for no other reason than that it is the right thing to do. Because if a child believes in respecting people, no amount of violence the kid sees is going to change that belief (unless there are other underlying psychological problems which will make themselves evident to anyone who looks long before the kid gets violent).
Still, I admit I wouldn't mind seeing Teletubbies or Barney banned. Perhaps we should also ban Microsoft software while we're at it (unreliability leads to frustration which leads to violent behavior)?
I honestly think these idiots mean well. I do. And I think there might be a linki between media violence and real-life violence. But this is not the way to fix it.
Look back to the 50's and 60's. Many of the TV shows were westerns. In most of those, at least one person was shot and killed in every episode; that is violence on a scale if not a level of realism) that you rarely see in today's television; it was certainly far more commmon then. Yet somehow, you didn't have all of these shootings and such. Yes, there were one or two isolated incidents, but it was never like it is now.
What's the difference, then? TV has, more or less, become less violent, yet violence is on the rise. In fact, take a look at the numbers; some of the least violent communities are out in the midwest, communities where kids have access to guns pretty easily and many hunt as a hobby (geez, how much more violent of a hobby can you get?) But even though they hunt, they don't lose control in schools. Hell, for a more extreme example, there's a high school in Montana I know of where kids used to bring pocketknives to school every day and were encouraged to bring chainsaws to the football games (their mascot is a logger).
Why? I think it's because of something which used to be taught in schools and homes which by and large isn't anymore. No, it's not religion. No, it's not morals.
It's respect.
Simply put, kids aren't taught to respect people very much anymore. That's why we now see ultra-exclusive cliques as far back as middle and in some cases even elementary school. It's why the teasing of geeks has gone from the relatively good-natured horsing around of the past (which really wasn't for the most part any different from what people did to their own friends; it was simply taken a different way) to the vicious, sometimes even violent, ostracism of today. And in most cosmopolitan environments, the idea of respect is gone. There's a pervasive "everyone for himself" attitude, which is causing the previous generation's title of "the 'Me' generation" to start to transfer out to ours.
Why is it still present in rural areas? I don't know. It's certainly no thanks to the religious right, the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever seen. Perhaps religion has a bit to do with it, but the idea of respecting all people doesn't contradict with any religion I know of, and I've studied many. Teaching respect doesn't conflict with religious freedom, and it needs to go back nto the schools. And not as the pretentious crap of uniforms or posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms (though if you cut out the four religion-specific ones then posting the remaining six wouldn't be that bad of an idea) or holding huge assemblies about it. It's something whic has to start in kindergarten or even preschool, and constantly applied until each and every child has a heartfelt belief that one should respect all people, if only for no other reason than that it is the right thing to do.
Still, I admit I wouldn't mind seeing Teletubbies or Barney banned. Perhaps we should also ban Microsoft software while we're at it (unreliability leads to frustration which leads to violent behavior)?
One word: bravo! If this one ever comes up, I'll gladly put away RC5 and SETI@Home to work on this. It's important that the Net be a secure place, and we need some kind of thing to ensure that holes are found and stamped out. While IDDN wasn't quite what I had in mind, it's definitely a winner.
Of course, law enforcement will hate IDDN; after all if there are no more security vulnerabilities how are they going to snoop on us^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprotect us from evil terrorists?
If they're going to dumb down a keyboard, they should do it somewhat like the iMac's.
No, I don't mean in terms of layout or size. I'm stuck on Grandma's iMac at the moment and I hate the keyboard. But consider: 12 function keys, the standard character set, the standard modifiers, Caps, Tab, the arrows, a standard numpad, Help, Home, Page Up, and Page Down. What else do you need, except perhaps a couple more function keys if you're an F-key freak?
Scroll Lock, SysRq, PrintScreen (unless you're on a Windoze box where the key supposedly takes a screenshot but doesn't even save the picture on the disk), and others like that have served their purpose. They were designed for ancient terminals, so few of which are in use today (with the ones that are in use being phased out, and no new ones being sold) that you certainly don't have to make new keyboards for them (especially since simply being able to use one renders a user non-clueless by definition, so you're not dumbing the keyboard down by removing them).
I'm for getting rid of superfluous keys that even the average Linux user has probably never used. Just don't cut out too many keys.
If they do that, they won't get any ratings.
I have several problems with it though.
1) Although I can understand the sentimental value the founders place on their name, I do not think a "virtual nation" should be based on any physical one, not even in name.
2) If we're going to do the "virtual nation" bit, it should be limited to one, namely a governing body which concerns the entire Internet, independent of any nation.
3) No bill of rights. Then again, this wouldn't be practical unless a virtual nation concerning the whole Net was founded. This one's particularly important, because there needs to be a free speech amendment (FUN FACT: For all the dumb laws the US has, it's also the only nation with a free speech amendment). Come to think of it, what other amendments could one put into the constitution of a virtual nation; very few apply. I suppose protection against illegal search and seizure would be good (since it implies the right to use strong encryption). Anyone else got any others?
Those are the three main problems I see with this one. Then again, it wouldn't be particularly easy to create a single governing body for the Net, considering that physical governments would likely brand us as separatists and/or terrorists and have us all killed.
X's greatest strength is far andx away its configurability. Pair it with enlightenment, and you can almost literally draw an interface out on paper and have X look and feel that way.
If it's possible to have too much of a good thing, though, this is it. X is great for configurability, but it goes too far. Without any sort of "standard" toolkit, window manager, or any such thing, there's no standard sort of interface on which a user can rely. This isn't saying that configurability isn't bad, it's saying that if you're going to make something configurable, you need to set defaults too. X doesn't do that. Consider the multitude of GUI toolkits, three or four drag-and-drop protocols (all of which are incompatible), four desktop environments which don't even share common API's on most things (meaning that support has to be written into an app four times if the author wants to support everyone), and so forth.
X's major weakness, though, is its age. Now, old software isn't necessarily bad. It all depends on how far ahead the developers think. X's original developers thought ahead several years. Problem is, those years ended quite some time ago. Things like drag-and-drop, inter-application messaging, text antialiasing, support for TrueType fonts, and such never made it into X. They've come in since as bolt-on solutions, but these things are so vital to a modern GUI that they really ought to be rolled in (which you can't really do without shelling out obscene amounts of money).
I don't know. XFree 4.0 appears to address some of these concerns. I'll still be giving Berlin a spin when it's usable, though, if only to see if it's a better system.
"Man of the Century" is not necessarily an award, and in some cases it's not even an honor.
Here's the thing: the title goes to the person who has had some sort of great historical impact over the specified time period (the last century, in this case). Yes, Hitler was a madman, an utter freak, but you've got to admit that he did have one hell of a lot of historical impact.
Personally, I'd have the three go this way:
Man of the Year: Linus Torvalds (inventor/maintainer of Linux, an OS which came out of literally nowhere to challenge the Microsoft hegemony and is putting up one hell of a fight)
Man (Woman would be more appropriate in this case) of the Century: either Admiral Grace Hopper (inventor of FORTRAN, the first non-assembly programming language, which is a big part of why computers are so pervasive) or whoever at Intel is credited with the introduction of the microprocessor (just as important in the pervasity of computers today)
Man of the Millennium: Johannes Guterberg (inventor of the first practical printing press, the single biggest catalyst the the spread of knowledge there has ever been, even greater than the computer
One of these again.
Look. On most points, I tend to agree with you. Most people don't get AIDS by any other means than doing one of several very stupid things. Quite literally they bring it upon themselves. I know it sounds like a heartless way of saying it, and I'm not saying they don't deserve help, but that's more or less the way it is in most cases. In most.
There are others, however, who don't exactly have a choice in the matter. I could point to the classical example of the baby born with it, but that's too saccharine. I'll point to the ones who get it by, say, a bad blood transfusion which by some freak accident slipped through the screening process. Or worse, the ones who were deliberately infected by others who use their disease as a weapon (yep, such people do exist; there was a dentist in Florida several years back who infected nearly 20 people in this manner. They claim it's a move born of desperation, to force scientists to find a cure, but I don't think that makes the crime any less horrid).
Oh, and the other reason to invest in AIDS research: there are scientists who predict that by about 2010, AIDS will mutate and evolve into an airborne form, as contagious as the common cold. The other half insist that this is a ludicrous idea, that viruses take longer than that to evolve, and I tend to agree with that, but still, let's consider the 11-year one the worst-case scenario. Suddenly, it's not a "sinners' disease" anymore, is it? It's a plague which could well wipe humanity off the face of the planet. That's the thing: we need to find a cure, or at least a vaccine, fast.
I still don't like Bill Gates. And his donating $100G to AIDS research still doesn't put him in the same league as other "philantropic" billionares, who give far larger portions of their wealth away (take Ted Turner; he only donated $1G to his cause, but that was fully half of his wealth; I consider that to be the more generous contribution). But much as I hate to admit it, I've got to say Billy's actually done something good for a change.
By the way, as for the "sinners" bit; I suggest you get off of your holier-than-thou kick. You're certainly no better than anyone else; you can't even obey the simple rule of respecting all people (phrased in most translations as "love thy neighbor as thyself" but meaning exactly the same thing).
If the even numbers are stable, and the odds are devel, what happened to 1.4.x?
Linus decided there had been enough changes to warrant a jump all the way to 2.0
Maybe 2.3. will be 3.0.x
Perhaps, but I doubt it. Linux said he wanted to experiment with faster iterations. In other words, he wants fewer new features going into each release, which will allow more time to stabilize the code while it's still in development. He's also been good about not making huge version number jumps too quickly, and when he makes them it's for a damn good reason (wasn't 2.0 the first stable kernel to use ELF binaries?)
A nation can tax transactions which occur inside itself.
The problem is that the Net is not physical. It does not exist in any nation. Not even the US, even if the US created it.
If the Net were to create its own governing body (yeah right, like that's going to happen, though it might just have its uses) then it would have the right to tax transactions within itself (of course, it would need a form of currency first). But for a nation to tax transactions within something which isn't even within its borders, but in a sense isn't even on its plane of existence? Absolutely preposterous. I hope it doesn't pass, even though I know it probably will (that's the government for you; it used to be that it'd tax the hell out of you and still spend more, now it doesn't even spend all the money it gets yet it taxes even more).
You know, I've been considering the platforms for various parties, and there really isn't one that could be considered "moderate." All of them are too extreme in some manner or another. On one end, of course, there's the Green party, Libertarians, and anarchists. On the other you have Communists, totalitarians, reactionaries, and the religious right.
Even Democrats and Republicans are extreme, though not as extreme as most of the others. And that "reform party" is just as bad.
Even in other nations, the parties are the same general way. Sure, they go by different names, but no political party has its head screwed on quite right. It's just a matter os differences in where the extremities occur.
What we need is a "Common-Sense Party," for lack of a better term. Or perhaps a better name would be "Technologist Party." Something which places strong values on personal freedom and works to ensure it while striking a real balance between personal freedom and governmental authority (in other words, a balance which is even between the two, rather than tipped too far towards either end, which all the political parties I've seen are). I think it's a possibility.
Major issues include:
1) The free (as in unimpeded, not as in gratis) flow of information is crucial to today's society in a world where knowledge is rapidly becoming more valuable than gold. This has implications for encryption, education, and the media (particularly censorship). Free-speech issues are also included here.
2) Personal privacy is a vital aspect of personal freedom. This one also has implications for encryption.
3) Free will is the vehicle which drives humanity forward and keeps us together even through the toughest times. Note, however, that the right to free will does not include the right to infringe upon the free will or other rights of anyone else. This has implications on censorship as well as other issues. Note that, of course, free will includes free speech.
Anyone else care to expand on this? Comments? Anything?
The ban on encryption software could well be unconstitutional.
Forget free speech for a moment; this is another set of grounds. Consider that another amendment forbids illegal search and seizure. Encryption's whole purpose is to guard against such things. Therefore, it could be said that banning encryption is an infringement on Constitutional protection from illegal search and seizure. In fact, since Echelon has been proven to exist, that's exactly what the encryption ban is.
The primary purpose of law enforcement is to punish those who break the law (be it by removing them from society or imposing fines or other punishments), and it always has been. "Prevention" is only a secondary purpose, an one which has always been carried out only indirectly. Perhaps Janet Reno has forgotten this. I very much doubt that she intends to be the totalitarian dictator she seems to want to become. Then again, I also doubt that she's ever read Milton.
At least this isn't law yet. Individual states still have to pass it, and M$ can't bribe THAT many legislatures (hmmm... well, theoretically Billy could divide up a half-billion among each state legislature, but that'd be too obvious).
Hell, even if it can, the software companies (most of which are already ethically questionable when it comes to licensing; M$ isn't the only one) will create such outrageous licenses that Open-Source will simply look even better. The divide between OSS and proprietary is growing wider, and it looks as though it could be in out favor.
And, of course, the Supreme Court can still overturn it as unconstitutional (that bit about disabling software remotely could be construed as illegal search and seizure).
The movie ratings were a Good Thing. Operative word, were. When they bgan, they were a tool for parents, just like anything else. The idea was that a parent would have to decide if their child was mature enough to see an R-rated movie, with that decision being evidenced by the parent paying for the ticket. The scheme would have worked great, but it failed for several reasons, two of which are the most prominent:
1) Parents got lazy and wouldn't do any research on the movies their kids wanted to see. They took the ratings as gospel, offloading their responsibility onto a ratings board.
2) Movie theaters wouldn't enforce the ratings, by and large (and why would they; it meant lost ticket revenue and no one was forcing them to enforce the ratings anyway). This rendered it ineffective, which parents saw. If people don't think it's effective, it's not effective.
I see two things as needing to be done with the system. First of all, it needs to move to something more content-based, like the TV ratings systems of today. Some would say that this encourages lazy parenting even more. But the fact is that parents should at least know something about the movies their kids are seeing, and if this is the only way to get even semi-meaningful information into the parents' heads then so be it.
Second, the ratings system needs to be enforced by movie theaters again. I know, I'm going to get flamed for this (which wasn't the intent). But I'd also be willing to bet that less than one percent of Slashdot readers, if even that, are over the age of 13 and that the vast majority of those have forgotten what it was like to be a kid. We weren't always mature adults; hell, some of us still aren't (as evidenced by all the FIRST POST-ers). There are some things which most kids simply haven't developed the maturity to handle seeing yet. Those who have can still see the movies, even by this system. It simply takes the consent of the people who one would hope would be mature enough to judge maturity and know the child well enough to do so accurately: the parents.
And think honestly; doubtless we all would have liked to be able to see any movie we wanted as a kid, but when you were eight or even thirteen years old would you have been able to handle Eyes Wide Shut or South Park or even American Pie? Or even if you could, would you have been able to really appreciate any of these? Perhaps a geek audience isn't the best to ask, since I'd imagine most of us were much brighter and more mature than average as kids, but you get the idea...
I'll grant, Linux is a Good Thing. I'll grant, it's gaining in popularity. But there is simply no way this is possible, not yet at any rate.
Consider, first of all, that not counting upgrades TurboLinux, Win98, and MacOS don't even take up 50% of the market in Japan by TurboLinux's own admission. This said, therefore, what are the other OS'es people are buying in Japan, considering that there must be at least six more for it to be mathematically possible for the numbers they gave to be correct (that is, with TurboLinux at the top, Win98 second, and MacOS third with the given numbers)?
Look, I'm rooting for Linux as much as the next guy. But someone at TurboLinux needs to check their numbers, because something isn't adding up
But still, I'd love to see the look on Billy's face when he reads that press release...
The most major problem is that no mater what biometric you choose, there are people who lack that biometric (handprint scans are useless to someone missing that hand, for example). To reduce the number of people who can't theoretically use a biometric system, you have to use multiple biometrics, any one of which grants access. This, however, increases the possibility for error. Furthermore, there is only one biometric which everyone is guaranteed to have, namely DNA, however this one has two severe problems: privacy concerns and the fact that identical twins (and clones) have the same DNA, so the biometric is not totally unique.
The other problem comes with theft. Nowadays, people will shoulder-surf or guess your password, or steal your token; eiother way you're rarely hurt. But I don't want to think of what they'd do to get my handprint or retinas.
This time I'm afraid I have to side with them (don't get me wrong, they're still an Evil Empire, but this is simply too much). First, because standards are a good thing. Second, because AOL's modification of their own protocol for no other reason than breaking Microsoft's clients is no different from what Microsoft did with Windows to break DR-DOS (granted, AOL still allows connections from other clients, but for how long?) To bash Microsoft when it purposely breaks a competitor's program is one thing. But to not bash another company that also does it, even if the broken product is from Microsoft (which is by definition broken anyway), is hypocrisy.
Granted, Microsoft's motives in releasing this client are doubtless sinister. They want to control this market too, and will somehow manage to Embrace and Extend this protocol to do it (don't ask me how they'll do it without being obvious). But they're right to blow the whistle on AOL for this action.
Here's the thing. In theory, resurrecting an extinct species is a Good Thing. Because of this, the idea of cloning an extinct species seems to be the ideal solution. In reality, however, this is hardly the case.
First, you see, you need to find intact DNA of the birds. Considering how long it has been, finding intact DNA of a Huia bird is going to be exceedingly difficult, particularly since you need to find the DNA of more than one (at the absolute least you need one male and one female).
One male and one female, however, is hardly enough. You need to find hundreds. Why? Well, consider this: if you clone two birds and mate them, the offspring will all be siblings by definition. Who, now, do you mate these with? Your only choice is to mate them with each other. This leads to an entire species of inbred birds, which (because the birds would inherit every single recessive gene which the parents posessed) would be devastating to the gene pool (even more so than unrestricted hunting, which is why cloning animals of an endangered species also would not work).
Our technology isn't at the point where engineering the necessary differences into hundreds of clones is a feasible thing. We haven't even mapped out the Huia bird genome yet; that alone will take years (if it's even possible, given that the species is extinct so the effects of the various genes cannot be observed).
That's the thing. This would be a great idea, if it could be done. But with our current technology, it can't. We're simply not at that point yet. It's a good dream to have, but for now that's all it will remain: a dream. Any attempts to do this now will result in nothing but millions of wasted dollars, money better spent developing the technology that will make this dream actually work.
Actually, it is open to competition. Look at UPS, FedxEx, Airborne, DHL, and dozens of other courier services. And while the competitors offer better services in some areas, their costs are orders of magnitude higher and they still don't offer some services which you get with the mail (most notably free daily pick-up and drop-off).
USPS will continue for a very long time, I think. It's still the cheapest way to send packages in the US unless you count throwing them really far (and I might add that it's one of the cheapest postal services in the world; consider the UK's Royal Mail for example).
The main problem with the service is that it is technologically backward, compared to the competing courier services. In particular its computer system is abysmal, though there is an intranet project in the works (last I heard they were even going with WebObjects as the base); this will allow for package tracking and such.
Yes, other courier services are faster. But given the choice, I think most of us would still prefer to use the USPS in most cases for sending non-urgent packages. It's sort of the low end of courier services; popular, cheap, and perhaps not as fast as the higher-end stuff but it still gets the job done.
Ah, yes, the ancient techie myth that simplicity and power are mutually exclusive. A myth perpetuated by lazy programmers who don't want to do it right the first time, corrupt MIS people who know that if everyone can use the machine they're out of a job, and pepole who want to feel "special" because they've spent years of training which shouldn't have been necessary learning how to operate a machine.
The fact is, given the proper software there isn't anything I can't do in Linux that I couldn't also do on a Mac. The reverse is also true. As a matter of fact, it's true btween any two operating systems, even Windows (though I hate to admit that one).
As for being able to change anything about the hardware, your point is moot because that can be done on a Mac as well (and it's still easier than doing it on Windows or especially Linux, even after the advances these OS'es have made).
In short, not only is it not "extremely necessary" to have a switch to make the OS complex, it's quite unnecessary. 99% of the population neither uses nor wants that, and the other 1% can still do everything they want. Yeah, you don't get to go power-tripping while doing it, but you can get it done.
Closed software? Yeah, to some degree. However, take a look at the direction they're headed in. THey've already Open-Sourced Darwin and QuickTime Server; my guess is that thty're testing the waters. If we don't give them a reason to regret this decision, it's likely they'll Open-Source more.
(Then again, there are so many anti-Apple zealots in the OSS community that my guess is that we'll be giving Apple plenty of reason to regret it, jugding from all the Apple-bashing I hear here).
Closed hardware: Again, to some degree. But again, look at the direction they're moving in. They went from NuBus to PCI, a more open standard. ADB to USB. SCSI to FireWire (well, there's a step back, but consider the steps forward). a proprietary ROM to OpenFirmware and no ROM (they're still cleaning out the last vestiges of the ROM, but it should be noted that the versions on the Blue G3's, iBooks, and the latest iMacs contain no OS-level code at all.) Couple this with an Open-Source operating sytstem made by Apple which lets you get the system specs easily.
Over-priced? You're one of those "something for nothing" freaks, I guess; you want a machine which beats the pants off of any comparably-priced PC for the same price as a PC. You're dreaming. It's better, and it deserves a higher price (notice also that the prices have come down; can you imagine what an iBook would have cost three years ago, switching its current specs for equivalent ones of the time?)
And unreliable: compared to Linux, yes. But it's by no means the worst on the market. A properly-maintained Mac will outdo NT in terms of stability and performance (then again, I suppose that isn't saying much).
And you know what, I'd say the emperor really isn't wearing any clothes, Your Imperial Majesty.
However, considering that the kernel now supports the iMac and the Blue G3's, I'd imagine iBook support won't be terribly difficult to do (remember that Apple's working on unifying the architecture so that all the models will eventually share one motherboard). My guess is that it'll support the iBook in a few weeks.
The biggest problem will be adding PPC AGP support to the kernel (needed for the video); that's never been done before. Existing x86 AGP code will help, but there are issues to overcome...